All-India judicial service on govt radar

The Central government has sought views of its top law officers, attorney general Mukul Rohatgi and solicitor general Ranjit Kumar, on the formation of an all-India judicial service.

The move comes after a recent meeting chaired by law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in which it was decided to seek the views of the top law officers on issues concerning formation of the all-India judicial services.

The judicial service issue has been hanging fire since 1960 due to difference of opinion between the states and the judiciary.

Both the law officers attended the January 16 meeting along with other officials of the law ministry.

The government has given a fresh push to the long-pending proposal to set up the new service to have a separate cadre for lower judiciary in the country.

But there is a divergence of opinion among state governments and high courts on constitution of the all-India service.

One of the problems cited is that since several states have used powers under Code of Criminal Procedure, and Code of Civil Procedure to declare that the local language would be used in lower courts even for writing orders, a person, for example, selected from Tamil Nadu may find it difficult to hold proceedings in states like UP and Bihar.